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Nascent studies shape tomorrow’s science. UChicago promotes field advancing research through the Strategic Collaborative Initiatives seed grant program for joint UChicago and Fermilab projects. These grants support original, innovative, early-stage research with potential to push the boundaries of our known world.

Steven Sibener (pictured), the Carl William Eisendrath Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry at the University of Chicago, and Lance Cooley of Fermilab aim to improve the efficiency of superconducting radiofrequency cavities, a key technology for next-generation particle accelerators. These cavities allow for particle accelerators powerful enough to open new frontiers in physics without the need for a massive increase in size and costs. The joint UChicago-Fermilab initiative has received $1.5 million in additional funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dark energy accounts for 70 percent of all energy and mass in the universe. Yet we know very little about this remarkable phenomenon, which speeds up the expansion of the universe. Fermilab has built a 570-megapixel camera to peer deep into the cosmos. Mounted on a telescope in Chile, it reveals dark energy by taking photos of galaxies when they were only a few billion years old.